Fighting Cancer with Big Data

In this TEDx video, Neil Hunt describes how Big Data analytics are being used in the fight against cancer.

Targeted drug therapies are showing promise in combatting cancer, but classical clinical trials are poorly suited to matching them to the thousands of variations of cancer caused by different DNA mutations. Big data techniques offer a way to analyze data pooled across many patients: their specific disease mutations, biological markers, the treatments, and outcomes — in order to identify unexpected ways that existing therapies can be applied and combined to create personalized treatments that dramatically improve the chances of survival.